BIRD NOTES

My plans for Aug. 14 and 15 were to go to Brier Island on Friday and then on a pelagic there on Saturday and then back home.

I had originally planned to write a column on Two Days In The Life Of A Birder based on a trip that I made to Brier Island recently for a pelagic outing. That was before I found out about the discovery of an American avocet by Nick Von Mattzahn in Rose Bay at Sand Dollar Beach on Aug. 14.

On Aug. 6 Bette Veinotte was visiting her family cottage in Green Bay and saw 60 sanderlings.

I had gone after a few yellow-crowned night herons this year without success.

I led my usual field trip for the Nova Scotia Bird Society for Mahone Bay on July 25. I normally start at the three churches in Mahone Bay and then we walk along a stretch of the Mush-A-Mush River.

On July 18 at Crescent Beach I counted 36 short-billed dowitchers, 16 willets, two black-bellied plovers and two semi-palmated sandpipers.

On July 10 Steven Shewchuk sent me an email saying that he had a good breeding season for tree swallows with good nesting success.

On June 28 I had the privilege of both seeing and hearing Nelson’s Sparrows at Oxner’s Beach. This is the last sparrow to return here in migration and thus is a late breeder. In recent years numbers of these sparrows have dropped around here due to habitat removal.

Kevin Lantz found a great-crested flycatcher at the end of the Rhodenizer Road in Cookville on June 20.

Dorothy Poole and I set out on June 14 to do my yearly Breeding Bird Monitoring Route, which starts at Jordan Falls goes into Shelburne and then up into Welshtown.

Josie Munro captured some great photos of a broad-winged hawk. The broad-winged hawk nests from Alberta east to Nova Scotia, south to Texas and the Gulf Coast, Florida and the West Indies. They winter in the Florida Keys to Brazil and casually further north.

June 6 and 7 was the out-of-town meeting for the Nova Scotia Bird Society, this year on Brier Island.